The Malik Report

The Detroit Red Wings theoretically came into Game 5 against the Blackhawks determined to win, but they displayed a strange abandonment of their puck possession system, throwing blind passes to either no one or Hawks players in all three zones...They allowed the Hawks' hacks-and-grabs to frustrate them, they allowed the Blackhawks to out-skate them while trying to do far too much as single players, and the Wings took some dumb penalties, made some awful, lazy clearing attempts and allowed Captain Pork Chop and his pals to climb back into this series, taking a 4-1 decision.

Game 5 will take place on Monday night in Detroit (8 PM start), and I'm sure that the rest of my night will be spent reading about how wonderful Jonathan Toews is, how Bryan Bickell (nice charge on Kronwall) and Andrew Shaw (scrum-meister) got the Wings' goat--they did get Abdelkader's--but I'm not willing to give the Hawks much credit here.

The Professional Hockey Players' Association, the AHL and both the Grand Rapids Griffins and Oklahoma City Barons are doing something unprecidented to help the victims of the tornado that devastated Oklahoma City's suburbs. Per the Grand Rapids Griffins' PR department:

AHL, PHPA TO DONATE TICKET REVENUE TO TORNADO RELIEF EFFORTS
Gate from May 29 game in Oklahoma City will benefit United Way

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. ... The American Hockey League and the Professional Hockey Players’ Association, in conjunction with the Oklahoma City Barons, announced today that all ticket revenue from the Barons’ game against the Grand Rapids Griffins on Wednesday, May 29, will be removed from the league revenue-sharing program and instead will be donated to the United Way’s OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund.

Updated 13x at 3:49 PM: The Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks will tangle in a potential elimination game tonight in Game 5 of their second-round series (8 PM EDT, 8:20 PM EDT puck drop, NBC/CBC/97.1 FM, post-game on FSD and WDIV), and around the time that the Red Wings arrived in Chicago last night, the NHL announced the following:

The starting time for a potential Game 6 between the Blackhawks and Red Wings has been set for 8 p.m. ET on Monday in Detroit.

The Detroit Red Wings and their fans have gotten used to the concept of the Wings playing the underdog and/or spoiler's role over the past season, but it's definitely a different and/or unfamiliar position for the team to be in, and ahead of Game 5 against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight (8 PM EDT, NBC/CBC/97.1, with post-game shows on FSD and WDIV), Yahoo Sports' Nicholas J. Cotsonika spoke to two members of the Wings' powerhouse teams of yore. Sometimes it's best to begin at the end and suggest that you go back and start at the beginning:

“The Joe is rockin’ – like, stuff I haven’t heard in years,” Draper said. “I mean, how many times did you hear the ‘Jimmy Howard’ chant? … It’s, I guess, relishing the underdog role. Why wouldn’t Detroit rally around that? Detroit, people kind of kick it around. But I’ve been here 20 years now, and people are proud. Now you see the building and the atmosphere, and it’s awesome.”

“We were always an older team, older players, veteran, grizzled guys,” Osgood said. “I think the fans enjoyed that for a while, and now it’s changed. It’s younger guys coming up that the fans have grown to like and enjoy watching fly around the ice. It’s kind of the opposite end of the spectrum than it used to be, but it’s just as fun and just as enjoyable, if not a little more.”

On Friday morning, the Globe and Mail's Eric Duhatschek began his NHL notebook by suggesting that the Chicago Blackhawks may have proved that, in the playoffs, running into a hot team on the wrong week can wipe out a shortened regular season's worth of unbeatable play, and in a very roundabout way, the Globe and Mail has posited two more articles discussing the Wings' resurgent play, yielding something of a, "How the Wings work" theme. The Globe and Mail's James Mirtle offers several reasons why the Red Wings' "demise has been greatly exaggerated"...

Five: Only five teams have had a better regular-season record than the Wings in the four seasons since they lost in Game 7 of the finals: Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington and San Jose.

Eight: Detroit is one of only eight NHL teams to make the playoffs in every one of those four seasons as part of an incredible 22-year postseason streak.

Thirty-nine: Including this year’s run, the Wings have now played in more playoff games (39) than 23 other franchises the past four years. And only the three recent Cup winners (Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles) and San Jose, Vancouver and Philadelphia have won more in the postseason in that span.

The Detroit Red Wings head into Game 5 against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight (8 PM EDT, NBC/CBC/97.1 FM, and FSD will air a post-game show) holding a 3 games to 1 series lead, but they face a strange and difficult opponent for several reasons:

First, as the Hawks repeatedly mentioned on Friday, they rallied from a 3-0 series deficit against the Vancouver Canucks in 2011, and forced OT in Game 7; and second, Jonathan Toews is, depending on how you read his lecture about what a great player he is and how he's going to break out tonight, either due for a stellar game or due to completely lose it on Saturday night.

This gentleman (sorry, I don't watch PTI so I don't know who's who) apparently corrected himself after a commercial break.

Edit/clarification: I am not attempting to condemn ESPN's hockey coverage per se or Mr. Michael Wilbon. I'm glad that TMR readers state that Wilbon watches hockey in Chicago, and while we may slag on ESPN for its TV coverage, Barry Melrose and Steve Levy have been breaking down every game in 3-minute clips online, ESPN has been dispatching Pierre LeBrun and Detroit-based Craig Custance to games, Katie Strang provides strong Rangers coverage and was a stalwart during the lockout, ESPN Boston loves its Bruins and ESPN Chicago loves its Hawks (and the Bucci Overtime Challenge is a pleasant bane of my existence). ESPN's TV coverage of hockey sucks. ESPN's online coverage of hockey is the reason it's been my browser's homepage since 1996.

Very briefly: the Red Wings didn't arrive in Chicago until the NHL announced the following...

"The starting time for a potential Game 6 of the series between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings, if necessary, has been set for 8 p.m. ET on Monday in Detroit."

But the Wings were very blunt about the concept that the pressure they face to take the Blackhawks out on Saturday night comes from within, and that they're well aware of the fact that the Blackhawks will not go down easily, as DetroitRedWings.com's Bill Roose noted:

“Pressure? No, pressure’s for tires, that’s the old saying,” said forward Daniel Cleary, while speaking to reporters at the Red Wings’ team downtown hotel Friday afternoon. “Our thing is it’s a race to four. Those guys are champions, they’re winners, they know the toughest game ever is to try and eliminate a team. We have to be ready. It’s going to be the hardest game we’ve played all season.”

Game 4 of the Blackhawks/Red Wings second round Stanley Cup playoff series drew a 1.1 U.S. rating and 1.8 million viewers on NBC Sports Network Wednesday night, the highest rated and third-most viewed second round game ever on the network. Only Rangers/Capitals Game 3 last year (1.9M) and Sharks/Red Wings Game 2 in 2010 (1.8M) drew more viewers.

The strong numbers came despite competition from the other high-profile second round series — the overtime Game 4 between the Bruins and Rangers. Bruins/Rangers drew a 0.7 U.S. rating and 1.4 million viewers on CNBC.

The Blackhawks/Red Wings and Bruins/Rangers games overlapped from 8:00-10:00 PM ET, earning a combined 3.3 million viewers over the two-hour period. During those two hours, the Stanley Cup Playoffs was the top draw on cable in total viewers and the adults 18-49 demo....

Locally, Blackhawks/Red Wings Game 4 scored a 10.04 rating in Chicago — the market’s highest ever for a second-round game on NBCSN — and a 12.35 in Detroit.

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.